In the first paper in the Finance section, a group of authors, I. Janković, V. Kovačević, I. Ljumović and S. Popović, uses multiple panel data models to examine factors that influence bank lending to SMEs in the EU. Despite the fact that SMEs are the major drivers of economic growth, they often encounter problems in attempting to obtain funding. The findings show that SMEs from construction or manufacturing sectors have a greater chance to obtain bank loans than service sector companies. Also, rising inflation hampers SMEs’ access to bank loans. In the next paper in this section, A. Đorđević analyzes the shifting patterns observed in the real effective exchange rate (REER) movements in the countries of Southeast Europe (SEE) in the period 2001-2020. Following a decomposition approach, the research provides an important insight into the competitiveness profile of these countries and draws attention to wide variations in terms of the obtained results, both across SEE countries and within each country across time.

The first paper in Management section, written by A. Todorović Spasenić, J. Erić Nielsen and V. Stojanović Aleksić, looks at the role of organizational culture in fostering the implementation of TQM concept. Based on an empirical study including 64 Serbian manufacturing companies with certified quality management systems, the authors confirmed their hypothesis about a significant impact of organizational culture on the adoption of TQM principles and financial performance of companies. In the second paper in this section N. Gabriš points out the importance of including the analysis of the so-called megatrends, such as digitalization, climate change, climate change, resource scarcity, population growth, population aging and urbanization growth, as a part of strategic forecasting of companies in Serbia. The results of her survey show that the megatrend of aging population is a major concern for managers in Serbia and that they mostly have a positive attitude toward investing in strategic forecasting.

In the Logistics section, a team of authors, T. Tica, B. Vuković, D. Saković and D. Jakšić, explores the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the profitability of logistics companies in the Western Balkans. Their empirical study includes a considerable sample of 798 companies. As expected, due to its pivotal contribution to supplying household supplies, medicines and medical equipment during the pandemic, the logistics sector proved to be more resilient than other sectors of the economy and even managed to achieve higher profitability in the crisis period.

In the Tax and Law section, a duo of authors, S. Vržina and S. Luković, delves into the role of taxes in reducing income inequality in EU member countries. Overall, taxes have a negative and statistically significant impact on income inequality, while the redistributive power of taxes is highest in the most unequal societies and vice versa. According to the authors, governments should prioritize combating cross-border tax avoidance over measures such as increasing statutory tax rates or progressivity of taxes.

The first paper in the Economic Growth and Development section, written by M. Đaković, M. Pjanić and M. Inđić, deals with the analysis of the impact of macroeconomic indicators such as inflation, interest rates and exchange rates on the share prices of 29 companies listed on the Belgrade Stock Exchange in the period from January 2015 to January 2021. They found out that the exchange rate had no effect on the price of shares in the given period, while there was a positive correlation between changes in interest rates and inflation and changes in share prices. It the second paper in this section, a trio of authors, M. Leković, D. Dimitrovski and T. Stanišić, analyses contemporary literature on the sharing economy indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and/or Scopus within the fields of economics, business and management. This is the first bibliometric analysis exclusively covering the topic of sharing economy. The comparative analysis of WoS and Scopus databases revealed that Scopus is more comprehensive, but not more significant source of the sharing economy knowledge than WoS database, which could be regarded as an outstanding subset of Scopus.